CHALLENGE
A pharmaceutical company was facing push back by physicians on the efficacy of their blockbuster cholesterol drug.
Despite recent journal articles and conferences highlighting the efficacy of the drug, physicians who had frequently prescribed the client’s drug, were now switching to a competitor drug.
With budget planning taking place in the next few months, the client needed answers as to why this situation was happening and they needed the information fast.
SOLUTION
Over 3 weeks, we:
- Conducted physician interviews and discovered that the competitor had introduced sales messaging falsely claiming fewer side effects and greater efficacy than our client’s product.
- Then mystery shopped 6 competitor sales reps to pinpoint exactly what they were claiming and thus misleading physicians into believing these claims.
RESULT
We discovered that the competitor was basing their claims on European clinical trials versus drawing findings from North American trials.
Our client’s legal department pursued action. This resulted in the competitor making a public apology and removing the misleading claims from their messaging.
